NEW LOGO!!

Welcome to the next phase of new Genius branding!

As promised during babygate (brandghazi? lol), we’ve developed a new brand identity for Genius.

First important note: this isn’t a final redesign of the site!

It’s only one step in an ongoing process in which we roll out new elements of the branding. As of today, you’ll notice a new logo on the site.

We worked with an awesome Finnish design agency called Kokoro and Moi to develop this new wordmark and logo. The goal was to represent the full transition of the brand from Rap Genius to Genius with imagery that reflects a broader focus but keeps the spirit.

The shadowed text of the Genius word mark represents the layers of knowledge we create through annotation. When rotated, the G of genius becomes a sneering smiley face we’ve dubbed the Genius “Sgnarly”. This is not a cheesy, slap-happy, unicorns-and-rainbows smiley face! The Sgnarly represents the fun, irreverent, knowing, sometimes sharp way our community and brand operates in the world.

Unlike the hidden arrow inside the FedEx logo, the relationship between the G and the Sgnarly is not a secret – we want to show the world the twist hidden inside our brand! This represents an important element of the Genius spirit: we’re down to work together to fill in the blanks of what stuff means and bring everyone in on the joke.

So, what do you think? Remember, we’re not done yet! We just wanted to bring all y’all into the party as soon as we could. We’re excited to hear your feedback :) Look out for updates coming soon.

I’m going to be honest, I think it comes off as tacky, unsophisticated, and it’s just not G…

It looks kind of awkward on the site itself, doesn’t seem to have much polish to it. It’s a little jarring to look at, it’s too stretched/spaced out. Can we by any chance have more community-oriented decisions before making any leaps, next time?
Sorry if that comes off the wrong way, that’s just my opinion.

You first make a private post for feedback, wherein many (if not most) users conveyed a distaste for it. You said in that post that you were looking for feedback before going public with the change, yet didn’t reply to any of the feedback (minus one post near the beginning of the thread). We also have no idea whether you took any of the community feedback into consideration. To top it all off, you copied almost the exact same post from the private thread, adding insult to injury.

I understand you all want to move forward, and I totally feel you on the push to rebrand; however, that push can’t come with haste. If you ask for feedback, take it into consideration and work with it before making it “final” – I use that loosely as I know it isn’t a “final phase”, but it is a change that is now live (and will be considered by many to be the new face of Genius).

Ideally it would’ve been amazing to get members of the community to develop a new logo, as suggested by @nnmrts (I think). Those who are already part of Genius are passionate about it, and there are so many designers who would’ve been willing to give it a shot (especially if compensation was offered – I’m sure you paid this company).

Apologies if I come off too hostile, but you have to understand it from the perspective of members of the community (not that I speak for all of us).

There’s always been something charming about how bad this site had looked and functioned which was immortalized in the #WIB philosophy but I just feel bad that you paid for this. The logo looks alright but the Genius shadowed font looks like something a 13 year old would make in MS Paint tbh. It doesn’t really change anything as far as the site’s function and we’ve had much worse looks around here but I think the response has been pretty clear so far. It’s nothing to get too upset about for average users but if you want genuine opinions, it looks pretty terrible.